The Parc de la Riviere Bleue is an hour drive from Noumea and this iconic swimming hole is a 40 minute drive from the park entrance. There is a short walk of about half a kilometer from where you park your car at the "ancient refuge" picnic area. 

This sphere image was an experiment. I had made a sphere image sphere image here in 2008 but didn't think it really gave a good perspective of the round, clear pool with the little waterfall.

Last Friday I happened to find a 7 meter long telescoping fishing pole in the supermarket. Cost $20 and was made from some kind of rigid fiber-reinforced plastic. I epoxied a 1/4 X 20 screw in the end so I could mount my teeny little GoPro Hero 3 on it. It doubled as a clunky walking stick on the way to the swimming pool and when we got there I screwed on the GoPro mount, turned on the GoPro wireless, and extended the poles. 7 meters is a long way up there. 

At first I thought I might have a problem keeping the pole perfectly vertical but it was so long it had to stay vertical or it got hard to hold upright.

Perfect. I turned on the Hero3 in the one shot every half second mode and then just turned the pole around a couple of times. I turned the camera off then collapsed the pole, adjusted the GoPro to 45 degrees down, slid it back up and started shooting again and made another couple of 360 turns. Then I did the same thing with the GoPro looking 45 degrees up.

I started each shoot with the camera pointed in the same direction, about 90 degrees from the sun glare. In general you need to start the time-lapse sequence looking on the bright side of the image. Otherwise the highlights get washed out to nothing.

The GoPro did OK, and Autopano Giga nailed the 30 images I selected together in a few seconds with hardly a glitch. I compared it to the image I had done at the same pool a few years ago with my monster Canon Mark I. Of course the Mark I full frame Canon got better resolution and nicer color. But the experiment was about the change in perspective - 20 feet above the pool the pool looks rounder and you can see the river above and below the pool. It give a better overall perspective. BUT, it does not have the same feeling as the one taken from eye-height or lower. 

I kind of think spere images, as memory bubbles, need to have something close to the camera, a focal point, something you'd remember more than just the place. Since sphere images look in every direction the composition of the sphere relies on what I think of as a "presence" - a point of awareness - something or someone close to the camera to give a feeling of presence. 

In the aloof view from over three times where my eyes actually were, the pool and the swimmers seem remote. I don't feel involved in the image. It doesn't draw me in and let me emerge again next to that lovely pool in the wilderness of New Caledonia. It's like an out-of-body experience. And memory spheres should focus right down through your eyes into your mind.

Anybody want to buy a 7 meter telescopic pole with a screw in the end?